College joins tuition outrage
By Leah Rae
The Journal News • February 18, 2009
Purchase College, SUNY, is joining the uproar over what's to become of a $620-a-year increase in state college tuition, saying the extra money is being swept off to Albany and away from the schools.
State University of New York administrators were planning to use the new revenue to make up for funding cuts, college President Thomas J. Schwarz said. Instead, state leaders agreed to put the bulk of the money toward reducing the deficit.
What state lawmakers may see as another belt-tightening measure, Schwarz and his colleagues see as a major injustice: an unlucky class of SUNY students being slapped with an "excise tax" to help bail out Albany.
"I find this completely immoral," Schwarz said during a meeting with The Journal News Editorial Board yesterday.
Traditionally, tuition increases have filled the gap left by declines in state funding, he said, but the process changed. SUNY trustees voted last year to boost in-state tuition by $620 annually to $4,970. That could have offset some of the $210 million worth of funding reductions during the 2008-09 fiscal year. But under an agreement between Gov. David Paterson and the Legislature this month, all but 10 percent of the extra tuition money from the spring semester - when the new rate kicked in - will go toward reducing the state budget deficit. Next year, under Paterson's budget plan, 20 percent of the extra money will come back to the schools.
State officials have described the deal differently, saying the 10 percent and 20 percent allotments are "an expanded investment in the SUNY system."
Senate Higher Education Committee Chairwoman Toby Stavisky, D-Queens, said she would have preferred the tuition increase not be swept into the general fund, but that the decision was part of an entire package.
The upshot at Purchase is as follows, Schwarz said: The college has lost about $2.4 million in state funding for the current year, a 12 percent reduction. The tuition increase will generate only $190,000 in extra money for the college this term.
Students, paying an extra $310 per semester even as part-time jobs dry up, are not happy either.
"We see that the state and the country are in a tight spot, that the recession is everywhere," said Joseph Matoske, a cinema studies major and president of the Purchase Student Government Association. "But it's not right to take the money from the students. Students don't have this money."
The college is home to 4,200 students and a prominent School of the Arts. Morale has suffered amid small cutbacks - everything from colder buildings to shorter hours at campus facilities, Matoske said. He questioned how the economy will ever turn around if students are discouraged from pursuing college degrees.
"What kind of message is this sending to the schools on what our college is worth to everyone else?" he said.
Administrators have seen indications of the students' financial troubles. A review last year found that 100 students were attending classes without having paid their tuition, Schwarz said. This year, 700 students were in that category.
The college has worked out payment plans with most of those students, and the number is down to 150, Schwarz said. But higher tuition bills during a recession are clearly taking a toll.
"For some people it's nothing ... but for some people it's the difference between staying in school and not," the college president said. "What outrages me is that 90 percent of that tuition increase was swept by the Department of Budget. It didn't come to SUNY, it didn't come to us."
Reach Leah Rae at lrae@lohud.com or 914-694-3526.
When the faculty of the college start to openly and publicly join in this discourse, it lends power to our case. President Schwartz has access to numbers and statistics that we do not, and these help to show that this is not just an issue of students whining and complaining about a three hundred dollar tuition increase. The more information we can communicate to the public, the more likely people are to understand and act to support our plight.
Thank you President Schwartz for standing up for the students.
